Tim Armstrong, the CEO of Verizon-owned AOL, said he has “enormous respect for what Yahoo has accomplished” and that integrating the two former internet powerhouses will “create a new powerful competitive rival in mobile media, and an open, scaled alternative offering for advertisers and publishers”. I think overall, when you look at what the company’s achieved over its history and where we are today, I couldn’t be prouder of the team that we have and what we’ve been able to achieve.
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The deal is subject to customary closing conditions, approval by Yahoo’s shareholders, and regulatory approvals, and is expected to close in the first quarter next year.
“Our mission at AOL is to build brands people love, and we will continue to invest in and grow them”, Armstrong said in the statement. Starboard pushes for entire Yahoo board, including Ms Mayer, to be removed.
However, Mayer told employees Monday in an email that she intends to stay “to see Yahoo into its next chapter” without specifying for how long.
– Yahoo’s finances have been skewed by its stake in China’s Alibaba.
“It makes a little less sense now than it did two or three years ago” when Yahoo and AOL were stronger”, said Gartner analyst Andrew Frank. “Among the many entities that showed interest in Yahoo, Verizon believed most in the enormous value we’ve created, and in what a combination could bring our users, our advertisers, and our partners”.
Facebook and Google are forecast to deliver sales of $10.3 billion and $24.63 billion, respectively, by the end of this year, according to eMarketer.
Walden says Yahoo would be integrated with AOL.
It became the search engine to the infant internet.
Also, Yahoo Mail is the world’s one of the most popular email services which boast of approximately 225 million users’ activity per month.
Indeed, Mayer – whose four-year tenure atop Yahoo has been blasted by critics as a failure – is now expected to remain chief executive just until early 2017, when the mega-merger is expected to close.
Yahoo was founded as a web directory in 1994 by Jerry Yang and David Filo.
“The sale does not include Yahoo’s cash, its shares in Alibaba Group Holdings, its shares in Yahoo Japan, Yahoo’s convertible notes, certain minority investments, and Yahoo’s non-core patents”, said the release. Yahoo attempted to buy Google and Facebook in those formative years, but it was rebuffed and then it was dwarfed by them. Verizon, on the other hand, has stayed the course, and is now looking to add to its core business – hence, its acquisition of Yahoo, and before that, of AOL, another big name from the early days of the World Wide Web. It bought a 40 percent stake in Alibaba in 2005 for $1 billion and its current holding is now worth some $30 billion – the vast majority of Yahoo’s market value of around $37 billion.
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It seems unlikely, at least for the moment, that Marissa Mayer will receive the almost $55 million windfall by leaving Yahoo.
